Reviews with content warning for Rape - Ariadne

Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

360 reviews

ccmata's review against another edition

adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

It just really wasn’t my vibe. The story isn’t my usual go to style, but it had seemed interesting enough at the time. I don’t think I realized it was a retelling and not a reimagination of the situation and characters. User error for sure.
I also didn’t love the writing style. My brain needs shorter paragraphs, more dialogue, and less internal monologuing for pages and pages. Again, not for me, but maybe for someone else.

Content Warnings

juliabristow's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I'll start by saying that the writing in this book is amazing and has beautiful descriptions of the scenery and characters' thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately, I think that's one of the only things it does really well.

I am all for the trend of mythological retellings, but I think a fundamental requirement of the genre is having an interesting story to tell and this just didn't hit that mark for me. There's an even more specific subset of the genre, which is taking existing stories and giving them a feminist retelling in which the women, who are often erased from history and not given their due recognition, are centered rather than the men (Circe and Wake Siren are some examples I love). The issue with this specific story for me is that Araidne happens to be one of the few women in Greek history who actually IS remembered for what she did. Not only that, but the rest of her life just isn't very eventful, nor does she have a strong impact on those around her. I think if you're going to do a retelling that is centered on a less well-known character, you should have something important to say about that character. And I personally didn't find anything impactful in Jennifer Saint's character of Ariadne.

What makes this even more abundantly clear to me was the introduction of Phaedra's POV for only 2 out of 4 parts of the book. It's a bit jarring when it first comes up, and eventually makes more sense, but to me still felt like a weird middle-ground of being about both of them, but mostly being about Ariadne, but not having enough content, but they were split up so it makes sense, but the title is Ariadne, etc, etc. Ariadne also isn't super fleshed out/doesn't have a ton of character development. During her love story with Dionysus, she talks at length about all the things she's drawn to about him, but it's extremely difficult to tell why he likes *her*.

Anyways, it really just seems like the author saw other people doing mythology retellings about women and said "oh nobody has done Ariadne yet." But maybe we should have thought about WHY nobody has done Ariadne. At the end of the day, this review probably makes it seem like I despised this book, which actually isn't true - it was a fine read and I don't feel like it was a waste of my time, I just think it was unnecessary and not well-thought out enough

Content Warnings

emoryjoy's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I would like to give the caveat that I was listening to this as an audiobook and had it at double speed by the end. This quite nearly was a DNF.

I'm not sure if the story took liberties with the myth or was just much more in depth than I knew about. Either way, it absolutely nailed the Greek Tragedy vibe and was gruesome in that very specific way that myths often are.

Content Warnings

nightlight_reader's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional slow-paced

3.0

I should’ve just DNF’d this, but it’s really that the style didn’t vibe for me. It was slow and I just could never quite tell where we were going and felt like the synopsis didn’t tell me just how much we were going to cover. Some of this is due to my lack of knowledge of this specific chunk of Greek mythology, but like this was a ride I don’t think I would’ve signed up for had I known it would cover Ariadne’s entire life.

Content Warnings

kimblah's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I want to start my review by saying that before this book, my most recent reading of Greek mythology would have I guess been probably in college but I can’t remember it, so I’ll rephrase — my most recent & memorable reading of anything Greek mythology was in middle school. I do not remember much other than some names, maybe some of the things the gods/goddesses were gods of? NOT MUCH.

So, with that in mind — Ariadne is King Minos’ daughter. I really enjoyed all of the little tidbits of Greek mythology that Ariadne recounted as we start this journey with her. She sets the scene for how women have constantly been on the shit-end of the stick with Medusa’s backstory (blew my mind) & told us about a few of Zeus’ lovers & how they’d become Hera’s unfortunate victims. I was kind of appalled, but not really. Typical.

Oh, and her own mother, Pasiphae’s story? Ya know— the birth of the Minotaur? LAWD. By this point I’m not even that far into the book, but I’m like man, Greek mythology is fucked up because shewieee.

Anyways. Ariadne helps Theseus defeat her brother, the Minotaur, and then plans to run off with Theseus to be his wife. All will be happily ever after of course. Clearly that’s what happens to all these Greek women, obviously.

Well, that’s not exactly what happens. But I don’t know how much other people know, so I don’t want to give anything else away. I enjoyed Dionysus’ character, and while I really wanted to like Phaedra I had a hard time doing so.

I took away half a star for the end. For pretty much everything that happens in Part IV of the book. Well, not the entirety of Part IV, but quite a bit of it. I was mad and sad and jaw dropped.

I will read more Greek mythology retellings I think. I did enjoy this one a lot.

Content Warnings